You’re a job seeker, and the year is 2005. Job boards are not on the internet. There is no LinkedIn. An organization’s website, if it exists, lacks a “careers” page. Aside from circling names in the newspaper or pounding the pavement, how do you find prospective employers?
With luck, you meet Lori Zuker Briller and Rachel Zaslansky Sheer, the co-founders of Grapevine, a leading national staffing agency and the authors of Straight from the Grapevine: How to Crush Your Job Search.
Briller and Sheer have channeled their experience as Hollywood assistants, innovative perspectives and strategic know-how into career path solutions, recognizing and harnessing the catalysts for personal reinvention and professional growth. Now, 20 years after they launched their firm, both job seekers and hiring parties are struggling in a system plagued with dysfunctionality. Though the job market has changed, Briller and Sheer continue to light the way toward success.
Chemistry Test
Before founding Grapevine, Briller and Sheer were familiar with each other as industry cohorts but did not know one another. Despite the personal gap, they shared a parallel career trajectory.
“We both worked at a sort of smaller recruiting company back in the day,” says Sheer. “Lori had been there for a little bit and then realized it wasn’t the right fit, and then I did the same. And I left and had the idea to start a new agency, sort of a more modern agency, if you will.”
When Briller heard someone was launching a new talent agency, she cold-called Sheer to express her interest in a potential partnership. “I don’t even know what possessed me to call her,” Briller says.
Sheer accepted the meeting. The two met at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills and, hours later, emerged as friends, confidants and business partners. Their relationship grew from shared goals, gut instinct and a meaningful bond between two women sharing the ups and downs of life.
Back to the Future
When they launched their agency, Briller and Sheer relied by leveraging their massive networks. They created an email called “The Job Blast,” which delivered a list of open positions directly to recipients’ inboxes several times each week. “It was why people were drawn to our company, because they had access to all these people,” Sheer says.
Today, email newsletters are ubiquitous. But back in 2005, advertising was the conventional channel used by agencies. As a pioneer in the field, “The Job Blast” revolutionized the way people searched for jobs. It brought human connection to the process, something Briller and Sheer still emphasize as critical to job search success.
The duo continues to bring a fresh mindset to the job market environment. In a commentary they wrote for the Los Angeles Times in October 2025, Briller and Sheer flex their keen instinct for identifying market shifts.
They point out that while traditional studio filmmaking and its infrastructure are shrinking, Los Angeles still has a deep talent pool now evolving into the next generation of production—brand-funded entertainment firms, short-form production, podcast networks and more—creating new opportunities for skilled workers.
“LA creatives adapt faster than anyone else, constantly reinventing how stories are told and consumed,” they wrote. “These innovations are fueled by the city’s mixture of talent, technology and storytelling traditions.”
Writing Your Own Script
The transformation underway in Los Angeles mirrors the kind of reinvention many job seekers are facing in their own careers. “Everything’s analogous in the sense that you kind of have to think about how you’re rolling with whatever pivot and change in time,” Briller says.
To illustrate her point, Briller points to streaming, a household convenience that did not exist a few decades ago. Video rental stores were replaced by Netflix’s physical red envelopes delivered to homes, which ultimately gave way to instantaneous streaming. “Who would have known then that Netflix would be what it is today?” she says. “And now, where are those jobs that have opened up in those pockets that are feeding a whole new world of people who are coming in?”
Sheer adds: “You sort of have to just evolve with it and figure out a new path and figure out where your transferable skills can take you.”
Much of Grapevine’s success stems from Briller and Sheer’s own experiences as entertainment-industry assistants, roles built around keeping a celebrity or executive’s day moves forward seamlessly. Often working behind the scenes, assistants are solving problems in real time, prepping, organizing, briefing and playing a quiet but essential role in someone else’s public-facing success.
“Support comes in all different incarnations, depending on what that person’s looking for,” Briller says.
Whether in entry-level roles, team support positions or the classic one-assistant-to-one-executive model, these jobs can offer a distinct career advantage. Briller and Sheer, for example, refined their skills as top-tier assistants and now apply that expertise both to guiding job seekers and advising the employers who hire them.
Today, much of Grapevine’s advice is included in the book they published this year. “I like to look at it as a step-by-step guide,” Sheer says. “If you follow each chapter, they kind of build upon each other and, once you get to the end, you’ve got everything you need to know in your toolbox to go and crush that job search.”
A Few High-Level Takeaways Include:
1. Networking. Developing and growing deep relationships is foundational to career success.
2. Human connection. Trusting your instinct and talking to interviewers as people gives you what Sheer describes as “the human edge.”
3. Communication. Paying attention to how you communicate your alignment with the job description is essential. Briller suggests running your resume and job description through an artificial intelligence assistant and asking how your resume can be even more distinct.
Today’s job market is challenging, but agencies like Grapevine want you to succeed. For Briller and Sheer, it’s a source of joy.
And for those who are hesitant about using an agency to find a job? “It could be a really good experience for someone who’s never tried it, especially because that is a human connection and someone that you can talk to,” Sheer says. “And [we’re] not sort of like job, like they’re and it’s a free service for candidates. So why not?”
This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of SUCCESS Digital Edition. Read the full issue for FREE right here.
